Competitors RSA, McAfee Team Up on Security Management

SAN FRANCISCO -- Two data security companies that clash in several IT sectors have decided that it's better to work together in two of them: security management and risk/compliance management.

The announcement was made Feb. 15 at the RSA conference, being held at the Moscone Center through Feb. 18.

Rest assured that the two competitors will continue to battle it out to see who's more effective at fighting malware, viruses and hackers. But at least for now, it's all about cooperation on the security management side.

"Effective security management takes an ecosystem of partners who recognize that no single vendor is capable of addressing the amalgam of threats and security challenges faced by enterprises and end users," RSA Executive Chairman Art Coviello said.

"Addressing new, complex and ever-changing threats requires a holistic approach to security that closed environments just can't offer. Our open McAfee platforms enable partners, like RSA, to provide better and more secure customer environments," said Dave DeWalt, president and CEO of McAfee.

Both companies joined each other's interoperability partner programs several months ago. McAfee and RSA already have started joint efforts to develop new customized security packages.

McAfee and RSA currently provide integration between McAfee's Vulnerability Manager and the RSA Archer eGRC platform to do policy enforcement and compliance reporting of enterprise vulnerabilities.
 
The companies plan to optimize integration between the RSA Archer eGRC platform and McAfee's ePolicy Orchestrator. They also will integrate Orchestrator software and the RSA enVision platform to enhance both the real-time detection and automated response to attacks, RSA said. 

In this joint project, RSA and McAfee will share information about various risks such as security threats, compliance violations, and policy breaches gathered through their respective platforms. This information will be intelligently analyzed to enable customers to respond with targeted countermeasures, audit and remediation controls, RSA said.
 
McAfee and RSA also recently completed updated interoperability certification of McAfee Endpoint Encryption and RSA SecurID 800 hybrid authenticators. Making these two leading security products work together is designed to make customers better able to prevent unauthorized access and loss or theft of sensitive data from endpoint devices.

Data Loss Prevention remains an area of direct competition between RSA and McAfee. The two companies also compete in GRC (governance, risk management, and compliance) as well as risk management, although their offerings have differences.